Sure. I was getting kind of raspy not speaking, so thank you.
The Agricultural Products Marketing Act helps reconcile the fact that in our jurisdictional division in the Constitution the provinces have authority within their boundaries. The federal government is involved in interprovincial trade and export trade, as you have been hearing consistently.
The APMA allows the Governor in Council to delegate those authorities to individual marketing boards in provinces. So, for example, if the P.E.I. Potato Board has an order, it would have the authority to talk about pricing, marketing modalities, branding, and most importantly it would have the opportunity to collect levies on production that is destined for the province or for interprovincial trade. That's important for the board or the commodity group to undertake issues of branding to promote their particular product, for example.
Currently there are between 75 and 84 such orders covering at least 30 different commodity groups. It's a very well-used piece of legislation. It is one of the most efficient pieces of legislation I've seen and it's only four sections.
The minister is very interested in how it's operating and whether it's as streamlined, as modern, as it could be. The act itself goes back to 1949 so, like much in agriculture, it has a very long pedigree. We want to see if it still has the characteristics we want.
So that's it in a nutshell, Mr. Dreeshen.